It has become a familiar scene on the evening news across the country: Neighbors watch in stunned silence as police raid the house next door and the nice couple who for the most part kept to themselves are hauled away for running a methamphetamine lab in their basement. How could this happen, the neighbors ask, in our neighborhood? Isn't this the kind of thing you only see somewhere else?

Compared to marijuana, heroin or cocaine, methamphetamine, or "meth" as it is commonly known, is relatively new in the headlines. But this drug has had a tremendous and terrible impact in a short time. We now know that no community, no matter how large or how small, is safe from the allure and the destruction caused by methamphetamine.

Users are drawn in by the drug's promise of euphoria. Its quick, feel-good results make it appealing to a teenager who may be feeling blue or to an exhausted stay-at-home mom.

We've seen the allure of a "high" with other drugs. But even more sinister in some ways than cocaine or heroin, continued methamphetamine use can interfere with the brain's ability to experience pleasure normally. Can you imagine not being able to feel joy or pleasure from the things that make you happiest today? Imagine that you have unknowingly sacrificed your ability to feel such a basic human emotion for the false, short-term promise of feeling happy, high or euphoric.

Users quickly learn that methamphetamine is far from glamorous. Their teeth rot, they can't sleep, they become emaciated from lack of appetite and their thinning flesh becomes scarred by deep, self-inflicted scratches as they seek to scratch imaginary bugs out from under their skin's surface.

But they are addicted, and they usually cannot stop without help.

You may ask, at this point, why we should care about the drug addict? They are their own victims — no one forced them to use an illegal drug, right? They deserve to suffer.

But while some consider drug abuse to be a victimless crime, meth does not just affect the user. It affects the children, it affects the community, and in a very real and lasting way it affects the environment.

The collateral damage of this drug is nothing short of horrifying. We've seen babies burned to death when meth-cooking parents accidentally set fire to the lab in their home. We've seen children exposed to hazardous chemicals and severely neglected by their meth-abusing parents.

And we've seen environmental damage caused by meth labs. The chemicals used in making the drug include lye, red phosphorus and hydriodic acid, and each pound of finished methamphetamine creates up to six pounds of hazardous waste. These toxins are often dumped onto the ground or into the water systems near the lab — making meth your problem.

Last March, Congress passed and President Bush signed into law the Combat Methamphetamine Act, which gave us additional tools for targeting meth traffickers. This law provides a national standard for the retail sale of products containing the ingredients needed to make meth, like pseudoephedrine, and makes other important contributions to the war against drugs.

The most prominent change you may have seen is your local retailer moving some cold medicines behind the counter. It seems like a small step, but thanks to this and other initiatives — particularly at the state level — we have made tremendous progress in preventing the production of meth in small labs.

Now we're turning our focus to halting the manufacture and smuggling of meth from superlabs controlled by Mexican drug trafficking organizations operating in the United States and Mexico, and to reducing demand in this country. I've made clear to U.S. attorneys throughout America that meth continues to be a high priority. But we cannot win our fight against methamphetamine with prosecutions alone. We also need to educate people about the dangers of meth, so that they never start using it. Finally, we need to make sure meth abusers know that help is available to them, so they can get clean.

And so the president declared yesterday as National Methamphetamine Awareness Day, and events took place around the country to educate people about the dangers of this drug. The Justice Department is working with our partners at the federal, state and local level, in government and in the private and non-profit sectors, to increase understanding of this problem.

It is our firm belief that education efforts do indeed reduce demand. To put it simply, the more people know about meth, the less likely they are to use it. And we've created a model methamphetamine education presentation, called "Meth 101," that is available to everyone on a new Web site: www.usdoj .gov/methawareness.

Meth poses a tremendous challenge for law enforcement and all of society. We all share a responsibility to work together in this fight to ensure a safe, successful and drug-free future for our children and grandchildren. Progress toward that goal will be something very worthy of giving thanks for this holiday season.

Alberto R. Gonzales is the U.S. attorney general. He wrote this commentary for McClatchy-Tribune News Service.